        I may as well give a fair warning.  This is definitely a PG-13
fanfic, for content (NO hentai, graphic violence, or even particularly
bad language, however)  It is also not remotely like any of the fanfics
I've previously posted, (i.e., "Shadows of Insanity")  Please do not
post elsewhere without asking me first.

                Ophelia


                        AFTER THE STORM
                     By Elisabeth Hegerat


        I stand at the night-dark window, rain like tears streaking down
the black ice glass.  The smooth surface is cool, as I rest my forearm
against it.
        My breath mists unevenly against the slick glass, as my
reflection stares back at me, a solemn, watery stare.  I raise a hand to
my face, but find my eyes dry still.  It has been many years since I
last cried. I think I've forgotten how.  And as the heavens weep in my
place, I hear her stirring drowsily.
        "Haruka?" she calls, voice thick with sleep.  "What's wrong?"
        "Nothing," I answer softly, levely, "Go back to sleep, love."
The bed creaks, and then she is there beside me.  One slender hand
reaches out and brushes my cheek, a moth's wing caress.  She says
nothing.  She does not need to.  And then, because she understands, she
turns, goes back to bed, and lets me be.  Leaves me alone with my
ghosts.

        I wanted to be just like him.  Everyone loved him, my brother.
Half-brother.  I idolized him.  When he let me, I followed his every
step, trailing at his heels like a small puppy.  You must understand, I
was only six years old at the time.  I can hear him yet.  "Go on home,
Tag-Along."  That's what he called me.  I suppose it's only fair since
that's what I was.  When I look back, I'm surprised he had the patience
he did, as I tended to cling, limpet-like to my idol. I lived for those 

times, warming myself in his glory.  And I would trail behind him for a 

time, but eventually he'd tire of the game, and send me back home, 

patting me on the head like a small animal.  Go on home, Tag-Along.  

Again he'd be off with his friends, long legs outdistancing me easily, 

turning back to wave, with a smile in his kindly cruelty. But he could 

charm the very buds on the trees to burst into bloom, he could, and when 

he did smile, I'd give my arm, my leg, my life itself for that smile to be 

for me.  That was before he tore our world apart.

        I swore years before I'd never trust, never love again.  And
then I met her.  Bit by bit, stone by stone, she wore away my defenses,
the swift-moving current against the hardest granite.  And she opened my
eyes, and I saw that she loves me, and that I love her.  I look over at
the still hump that is Michiru, beneath the blankets.  I know she is
awake.  But I also know that she will feign sleep as long as I stand
here, brooding.  And when- IF I return to bed this night, she will finally

 settle into true sleep next to me, with that weary, trusting sigh.

        The rain still falls, unceasingly streaming past my window. I
see only the monster I killed tonight.  We had expected the usual
daimon, Michiru and I.  Bizarre and unthinking, unfeeling.  Only there
to serve its master's command. But the monster that looked up at me,
squinting through the murky night, it had a face that had once been
human.  For a small eternity, I could not breathe.
        "Kill me now," it pleads.  I look into the upturned face of the
thing that had once been my brother.  It still has his eyes.  I don't
want to know how he got here, what dark power warped him beyond belief
into this... THING that asks its death from me.  No one ever thought to
ask what would happen if a daimon seed met human flesh...  He knows me.
I see it in those unchanged eyes.  There is no room there for fear, or
scorn, or even amazement, that his baby sister is a Sailor Senshi.
There is only room for the pain.
        "World... SHAKING!" I say, the familiar words coming
automatically, though my voice is rough with pain, and my throat tight
with unshed tears.  And my world shudders, and shakes, and falls to
pieces around me, just as it did that night so many years ago.

        I can still hear their voices, echoing from the past.  Some
things never really leave you, and the sounds of that night will play
themselves out in my memory until my dying day.  Once again, I am six
years old. I huddle in the back of the closet, behind the winter coats
and aging rubber boots, a wiry scrap of a child.  And in the kitchen,
the voices rage. My world is shaking, and the foundations crack.  My
mother, who loves him just as I do, her shining, fair-haired boy, she
tells him to leave.  And never come back.  My brother, my sun and stars,
has just blacked her eye.  She found the gun, and the money.  I don't
know where he got it.  I don't think I want to, need to, even now.  It
was in the sock drawer, the gods only know why.  And she's realized that
her angel is a fallen angel.
        "Why?" she had said, lips white.  "Didn't I give you anything,
everything I could?"  And he had laughed, and told her not to worry,
that he'd just done a favor for a friend, that was all, everything was
fine.  She called him a liar.  That was when he hit her.  And that was
when I ran, for the dubious safety of the coat closet.  I don't think
they even knew I was there.
        I can see them, through the slatted door, my bright-blazing sun
and the solid earth beneath my feet, at war.  And now, I hear my
mother.. hear her...
        "You're just like your father!"  She throws it in his face, and
he falls back as if she had hit him.
        "No," he says, in the voice of a little boy, a tremulous cry, a
plea.
        Say it's not so.  "NO!" His cry is harsh, almost a sob.  He
raises the gun, that he had held so casually before.  It wavers in his
shuddering grip.
        "He hit me, and then he hit you, and I left him, BUT YOU ARE
YOUR FATHER'S SON NOW!"  Her voice is as harsh as the raven's, echoing a
doomsday prophecy.  His face crumples spasmodically, and his finger
convulses on the trigger.  The gunshot is louder than the loudest
thunder, and there is nothing left of the world I knew as my mother dies
at his feet.  He runs, leaving me there, and when the police come, they
find me kneeling in my mother's blood, crying for the last time.
        I shed all my tears that unthinkable night, stood dry-eyed
through the funeral, and the long days and weeks afterwards, when I was
sent to my father, who was not my brother's father.  And I joined the
world of the living again, tackled it head-on.  But I brought my ghosts
with me.  And to this day, I will not cry.

        And I see my brother's eyes, just as they were this night, and I
see him die.  He looks... relieved.  As if death has come, not as a
thief, a dark hand in the night, but as a benediction, a blessing to
cleanse the profane.  He looks as if he has finally found forgiveness.
Once again, I am left behind.  He has his peace, but where is mine?

        Now, as the rain washes down the blackened glass, all the anger,
all the countless whys, the old, old pain rises up, choking me, clawing
at my throat as it pulls me down.  And I fight, as I always fight,
striking out at my ghosts.  And then... and then I stop.  The wave of
sorrow, the hate, and the fear, it engulfs me.  And I am drowning.
Until... until there is only the empty night, and the rain, streaking
the windowpane endlessly.  The tight knot that ties my throat shatters,
and the shards tear me to pieces inside, and make me anew.  As I let go
of the past, I start to cry.  And she is there with me, her arm around
me as I shake.  I am NOT alone.
        "Hush, now, hush." Michiru rocks me gently, as if I were a small
child in her arms.  They are dead.  But I am not.  I will never forget,
but my ghosts need not haunt me any more.  The voices are a bare
muttering now.  They fade, and are gone.  And in the arms of my beloved, 
the past in its grave, and the tears still wet on my cheeks, together we 
sit.  And we watch the rain.


        END


Special thanks go out to Nightman for blatant encouragement, convincing me 

my 'fic was worth posting in the first place, and talking me into sending it

 to Jetwolf.  Special thanks to Jetwolf for yet more heady praise, some very

 insightful comments in revisions and such.  More thanks to Midnight and 

The Village Idiot for the continual "let me read you something" 's down the 

phone, encouragement, and honest opinions. Thanks, guys!



Comments welcome and much-appreciated at emhegera@acs.ucalgary.ca

